Aurora tired quickly of Mihai’s jokes against her, and decided to spend her time in the garden. She learned things about herbs and flowers from the maids, and quickly learned uses for quite near all of them. A snip of that yellow flower, and a bit of this leaf, and you could heal a cut in the blink of an eye. The princess Aurora grew lovely in the sun, quite a flower herself.

Her hair grew dark and thick, and hung to her waist in a braid. She was dressed in perpetual red and gold, her headscarf a wild pattern of black flowers on a yellow field, like her mother’s. “Bumblebee!” Mihai called to her from a window upstairs, “My pretty bumblebee, flitting from flower to flower, whatever are you doing?”

She turned to smile up at him, her oldest and closest friend, “Why, making honey, of course!” She called out as he laughed. She loved making him laugh, and she loved him. She was fifteen, and a woman now, and she knew that they would soon be wed.

Her mother scowled from the doorway, more anxious by the day.